Ephraim Hardcastle
MEGHAN Markle burnishes her feminist credentials on Friday by marking International Women’s Day with, among others, singer Annie Lennox and former Australian PM Julia Gillard. But the imminent arrival of Meghan’s first-born will test her equality commitment. Although a law change in 2013 means a girl can’t be overtaken by a younger brother when it comes to the throne, in all other areas the Royal Family stacks the cards in favour of men. If Meghan’s baby is a boy he instantly becomes the Earl of Dumbarton, and, in time, the Duke of Sussex. But a girl will simply be Lady X, and Dumbarton’s earldom will have to wait until a younger brother comes along. Meghan’s feminism seems to have an off-switch. FORMER Tory leader Lord Hague has been invited to the top table as the next master of his alma mater, Magdalen College, Oxford. When he was president of Oxford’s Conservative Association he was convicted of electoral malpractice – rigging an election for a fellow student. Isn’t life grand? A STUDENT bid £6,000 for lunch with Amal Clooney in an auction at Columbia Law School, where the human rights barrister is a visiting professor. The lunch with Mrs Clooney– at Jean-Georges, one of New York’s swishest restaurants – was listed as ‘Right to food (and champagne)’. Trust lawyers to know their rights. POSH OUTFITTER Turnbull & Asser rejoice in the discovery that John Lennon wore its pyjamas during his barmy six-day bed-in for peace with Yoko Ono, pictured, at the Amsterdam Hilton in 1969. Explains T& A: ‘They were bespoke with a faint sky blue and white butchers stripes and navy piping.’ Doesn’t really rhyme with: ‘Give peace a chance...’ STILL sending pulses racing at 70 on a Paris catwalk over the weekend, Jamaican firecracker Grace Jones is well known for her backstage demands. The eccentric singer and actress’s lengthy list has included six bottles of Cristal Roederer champagne and two dozen unopened Colchester oysters. Hosts are advised that ‘Grace does her own shucking’. She explains: ‘I don’t like it when other people open oysters for me.’ WHEN John Prescott’s wife Pauline complains in a forthcoming Channel 5 documentary about her husband – now Lord Prescott – regularly eating jelly and drinking two pints of fizzy lemonade, the former Labour deputy PM snaps : ‘Are you complaining that I drink lemonade, for Christ’s sake? And you’re drinking alcohol!’ Lady Prescott replies: ‘It’s only a little Baileys, John. Well, it relaxes me!’ He retorts: ‘Some people call it getting drunk, you say getting relaxed!’ CELEBRATING a £39million refurbishment of Cadogan Hotel in Knightsbridge, where Oscar Wilde was arrested in 1895, Lord Cadogan’s estate website boasts that the late poet laureate Sir John Betjeman was present at the arrest. Sir John, who died in 1984, was born 11 years after Oscar had his collar felt.